


Flows Right Into You

by Abbie



Series: Bound by Blood [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5068084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbie/pseuds/Abbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long, hard day ends in a feed, and Felicity needs something in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flows Right Into You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyChi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyChi/gifts).



> Sometimes, when life is very hard and you run so long you're not sure you can go on anymore, you just need someone to hold you. And since I couldn't be there to hold my dearest friend Chi when she needed it, I wrote her this. It's a poor substitute, but hopefully some comfort.

[[music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CePqZ2viQCI)]

 

Oliver slowly, carefully withdrew his fangs from Felicity’s throat, his hands gently cradling her close as they sat facing each other on her bed, one broad palm encompassing her ribs, fingers spanning across her back, pressing in gently against her spine. The other hand cupped her elbow, her forearm laying against the inside of his, her nails a light, tickling touch against his skin.

He opened his mouth wider, the tips of his fangs sliding free of her vein as smoothly as he could manage. She gasped, the breath hitching as he laved his tongue slow, slow, soft over the punctures. He closed his lips over the bite one last time, removing all trace of blood.

It was not a kiss. It wasn’t.

Felicity’s breath continued to hitch through these ministrations, and Oliver would later blame the drugged satisfaction of her blood coating his throat, warming his belly, for how long it took him to realize it wasn’t  _sensation_  that constricted her chest. It wasn’t the caress of his lips, his tongue that made her body shake with tiny tremors; not this time.

Blinking his eyes open, startled, Oliver straightened back enough that he could look at her, his fingers tightening against her. “Felicity?”

She turned her face away, tipped down. Tried to hide from him the knot of her brows, the tremble in her bottom lip. The wet spikes of her lashes and the slow tears that had rolled down her cheeks.

Panic flared in Oliver’s chest, and he let go of her back to cup her jaw in his hand, turn her face back towards him. His face screwed up in worry—had he hurt her? Bitten too hard, drunk too deep?—his thumb stroked over the apple of her cheek, swiping away the slip of another tear. “Felicity, please.”

She opened her eyes, bluer somehow from the crying, and—and  _smiled_  at him, a thin and watery attempt to reassure and ease him. It managed neither, and she couldn’t hold his gaze for long.

Her voice came out a roughened whisper. “I’m sorry. It’s—I’m fine.”

Impulsively, he leaned his forehead against hers—keeping clear the lines of how it was acceptable to touch her was always so difficult in the immediate aftermath of a feed—and took his other hand from her elbow to cradle her face between both. “You’re not,” he was matter of fact, quiet and calm and stark. “What do you need?”

Her eyes flew to his, startled, and his brows pinched together in confusion.

Why did she look so like she didn’t hear that question very often? Guilt stained his heartbeat, but he suppressed it; not now.

She pressed her shaking lips together, her chin quivering, and shut her eyes again, her hands coming up to hold his wrists. She sighed, that hitching breath again, and his thumbs smoothed away more tears. “It’s—” she cleared her throat softly, tried again. “It’s just been a very long day. I just—”

“Tell me.”

A sigh, her fingers stroking the soft, delicate skin over the insides of his wrists as if the solidity of him helped. “I’m so tired. And when you go I’ll still be tired, and I just…” She inhaled shakily, almost a whimper. Her eyes opened and she looked at him with such sad, imploring guilt, like she already knew she didn’t deserve to ask for this. “Will you stay? Will you just stay with me, just for a little while?”

Oliver’s face went slack, his lips parting, his eyes searching hers through the gathering dampness.

He was quiet too long, and she flushed faintly under his fingers, tried to look away. “I’m sorry, that was—ridiculous, I—”

Oliver refirmed his grasp on her face, gently turned her back to look at him again. “Felicity, can I stay?” Her eyes flew wide in surprise—and a very small hope. He offered a little smile, ignoring the warning voice in the back of his head that told him this was a bad idea, was dangerous, he should go— “Just for a little while?”

Tremulous, her mouth pulled into an answering smile. Between his palms, she nodded.

And then she flushed deeper, eyes darting to his shirtfront, his shoulder. He could hear her heart race faster. “Um. I just, I have an awkward request… You don’t have to, I just, I—”

“Felicity,” he laughed softly, warmly. Grinning at her quickly, he put a few inches between their faces, sliding his hands to her shoulders—letting one thumb rest proprietarily over the healing punctures of his bite. “I regularly awkwardly request to put my mouth on you, I think it’s probably your turn to ask for something.”

She laughed nervously, biting at her lip and nodding, lashes sweeping down. “I just…” She looked back up at him, eyebrows slanting hopefully upward. “Could we… cuddle? Just,” she indicated the made-up bed they sat on, the slightly wrinkled bedspread and mound of pillows at the head. “I just want to feel… held. Just feel not alone for a while.”

He wanted to tell her she wasn’t alone. Not ever. Never had to be again. Wisdom prevailed over desire, and he slid those words under his tongue to say around them, “Yeah. I—we can do that. Sure.”

She swallowed, exhaling in a purse of lips and glancing heavenward. “Thank you.”

He just shook his head, and then bent to unlace his boots. He felt Felicity’s gaze on his bent back, watching him for a silent moment before she slipped out of her own shoes.

In silent negotiation, they moved onto the bed, lying on their sides and facing each other against the pillows. She had taken off her glasses, and Oliver found himself trying to count her eyelashes from this close.

He cleared his throat. “Um. Do you want me to lay on my back, or? Spooning?”

Awkwardly tucking a curl gone stray from her ponytail behind her ear, Felicity looked a little dubious, like she hadn’t thought that far. “Maybe—” she gestured, and he scooted closer and lay flat, holding out an arm for her to slip under. Her head rested on his chest, and his arm curled around her shoulders. They lay like that for a moment, and then he hummed negatively and she huffed, leveraging onto an elbow and wrinkling her nose. “Maybe spooning.”

Oliver shifted onto his side and Felicity turned to put her back to him. He found his heart galloping wildly as he slid up closer behind her, his knees fitting behind hers like two commas, his chest to her back. She fit.

She fit so well.

Swallowing thickly, Oliver smoothed her ponytail out of his face and across the pillows, gingerly looping an arm over the curve of her waist. She found his hand and took hold of it, pulled it up against her stomach, just under her breastbone. He could feel her heart beating unevenly, thumping heavy and fast—so strong and sure and the drum that was fast becoming the rhythm behind everything he knew.

They lay close together, tense and uncertain for several minutes; and then, finally, something gave.

She began to settle, to ease against him. With one great sigh, she relaxed into his hold, head bent forward and her fingers tracing the veins and bones on the back of his hand where it rested against her belly.

Finally, Oliver gave in, and let himself have the moment. He curled close and clinging against her, resting his nose against the back of her neck, taking in deep lungfuls of the complex, familiar scent of her. Under it all was the faint coppery-salt tang of blood as her wound healed, and it only stirred the instincts that lived in the marrow of his bones, rooted somewhere fixed and unbreakable behind his sternum.

This was  _right_. It was good.

Too good, of course, to allow.

But for now, for now.

For now it was his. Theirs.

Time passed in the way it does in the deep of the night, slow as molasses and as mutably flowing, and Oliver and Felicity melted and blended with it, becoming one interwoven breathing pattern, a give and take, a shared heartbeat in slowed double. Thump, echo. Thump, echo.

Eventually, Felicity let go of his hand, but Oliver knew she was still awake. He wasn’t sure if it was an open door made for his escape. He chose not to walk through it. He slid his hand over her stomach, the cotton of her blouse impossibly soft under his palm; his hand traveled up her arm, her skin impossibly softer. He traced two fingertips over the mound of her shoulder, followed the slope of her shoulder blade down, pressed his palm to the backbeat of her heart and let it smooth up and down beside her spine.

He kept at this, breathing deep and even against the back of her neck, eyes memorizing a cluster of tiny freckles near her hairline in the comfortable dim of her bedside lamp.

Inevitably, the rise and fall of her rib cage beneath his hand shifted, and she slept.

Oliver’s hand stilled against her back, and for a moment, stretched and pulled like taffy, thick and clinging and saltwater sweet, he hesitated.

Then, breathing an indistinct swear, he tilted his chin up, pressed his lips to her nape in a firm, lingering kiss. Repeated it like a thief at her temple. She shifted against the pillow, settling further into sleep, face a study of peace and contentment and all the things that  _home_  should look like.

He tore himself from her back before the action became impossible, put his shoes back on, draped an afghan over Felicity, and left.

Compressed and guarded, locked deep inside his heart like a secret, like a treasure, he took the moment with him.


End file.
